Supreme Court Blocks North Carolina From Restoring Strict Voting Law

WASHINGTON — A deadlocked Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to revive parts of a restrictive North Carolina voting law that a federal appeals court had struck down as an unconstitutional effort to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

The court was divided 4 to 4, with the court’s more conservative members voting to revive parts of the law. The court’s brief order included no reasoning.

North Carolina’s law, which imposed an array of voting restrictions, including new voter identification requirements, was enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2013. It was part of a wave of voting restrictions enacted after a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively struck down a central part of the federal Voting Rights Act, weakening federal oversight of voting rights.

Challenges to the laws have met with considerable success in recent months, and Wednesday’s development suggested that the current eight-member Supreme Court is not likely to undo those victories.

Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who is seeking re-election this fall, asserted that North Carolina had “been denied basic voting rights already granted to more than 30 states.” He noted that four justices had supported the state’s position and that “four liberal justices blocked North Carolina protections afforded by our sensible voter laws.”

The law’s critics welcomed the order.

“This decision opens the door for fair and full access to the democratic process for all voters,” said Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians will now be able to vote without barriers. The voting booth is the one place where everyone is equal and where we all have the same say.”

Civil rights groups joined with the Obama administration in filing suit against the law, arguing that, several parts of the law violated the Constitution and what remained of the Voting Rights Act. A trial judge rejected those claims in April, but in July a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., disagreed.

The appeals court ruling struck down five parts of the law: its voter ID requirements, a rollback of early voting to 10 days from 17, an elimination of same-day registration and of preregistration of some teenagers, and its ban on counting votes cast in the wrong precinct.

The court found that all five restrictions “disproportionately affected African Americans.” The law’s voter identification provision, for instance, “retained only those types of photo ID disproportionately held by whites and excluded those disproportionately held by African Americans.”

This was so, the court said, even though the state had “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.” But it did find that there is evidence of fraud in absentee voting by mail, a method used disproportionately by white voters. But the Legislature exempted absentee voting from the photo ID requirement.

The court also found that the early voting restrictions had a much larger effect on black voters, who “disproportionately used the first seven days of early voting.”

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The justices were divided 4 to 4 on Wednesday over a state law seen as targeting blacks.CreditAl Drago/The New York Times

The law, the court said, eliminated one of two “souls-to-the-polls” Sundays when black churches provided rides to polling places.

In an emergency application filed 17 days after the appeals court ruling, state officials asked the Supreme Court to step in. Represented by Paul D. Clement, a former United States solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, the officials challenged only the parts of the appeals court’s ruling that they said would create confusion in the coming election.

The state officials asked the justices to temporarily restore three parts of the law: its voter-ID requirements, the reduction of early voting days and preregistration of some teenagers.

The state asked the justices to act because it said the appeals court’s approach would “threaten voter ID laws throughout the nation.”

The Obama administration responded that the appeal’s court’s ruling rested on “a careful appraisal of overwhelming evidence specific to North Carolina.”

“The only voter ID laws that the decision endangers are those proven through overwhelming evidence to have been adopted with racially discriminatory intent,” the brief said.

“This is a case about the use of race to achieve partisan ends.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted to reject the state’s arguments. Justice Clarence Thomas would have revived all of the contested provisions, while Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have reinstated the voter ID and early voting provisions.

“This ruling means that thousands of voters who would have been disenfranchised will now be able to participate in the presidential election,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which represented several plaintiffs in the case.

Republican supporters of the tightened standards, who had suggested that the appeals court’s judges might have been intending “to reopen the door for voter fraud,” took a measured tone on Wednesday.

“We respect the court, but are disappointed North Carolina will not be among the more than 30 other states with commonsense voter ID in place for the upcoming election,” House Speaker Tim Moore and Phil Berger, the president pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate, said in a joint statement.